Shakespeare "Owns" Women

 

 Shakespeare's women all have one thing in common-they are a possession, even a commodity, and not a prized one at that. His works reflect the attitude toward women at the time. They were unquestionably inferior. This inferiority of women could have been kept in the past, but because of Shakespeare, it has been immortalized. Young women read Shakespeare in school, but do we really want these girls to be taught that the "greatest writer of all time" did not view women as worthy of self-determination?
   In Hamlet, Gertrude is passed off from husband to husband without a choice. It is just what she was expected to do because women are at the hands of men and could be traded off easily. Ophelia becomes deranged when she no longer has a man to take care of her. She commits suicide when her father dies and the male lover in her life abandons her. In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet is not allowed to marry the man of her dreams because her father would not allow it. She belongs to her father and must obey him absolutely.